In the field of scanners for printing plate-making, there have become popular screening systems such as high definition screening or FM screening in which images are formed with smaller halftone dots than conventional halftone screens. For this type of screening system, it is preferable to have an ultra-high contrast type photographic material in which sufficient density of small dots can easily be obtained.
With regard to photographic techniques for reproducing ultra-high contrast images in a silver halide photographic light sensitive material (hereinafter, referred to as photographic material), for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,269,929 discloses a photographic material containing a hydrazine derivative and JP-A 4-98239 (the term, "JP-A" refers to unexamined, published Japanese Patent Application) discloses a photographic material containing a nucleation accelerating agent.
Photographic materials are generally subject to abrasion during handling or various transporting apparatuses, and in particular, a photographic material used in the graphic arts is likely to produce abrasion marks due to friction from transporting rollers of scanner exposing apparatus or contact with other photographic materials.
Abrasion in films not only produces abrasion marks but also markedly deteriorates qualities of finished originals. In view thereof, an improvement of abrasion resistance has strongly been desired.
In scanner exposing apparatus, a photographic material is generally set into position and transported via rollers. In this case, excessively high curl of the photographic material results in transport troubles. Curl of processed films is desired to be as low as possible to enable the films to be easily handled in subsequent processes, so that it is important to keep the curl of the photographic material, before and after exposure and processing, to the absolutely minimum.
As is well known in the art, for the purpose of minimizing curl due to elongation or shrinkage of the photographic material, a softening agent (e.g., polymer latex) is incorporated in one of gelatin layers to lower the Young modulus of the layer. Further, to minimize cracks or abrasion marks of the film is also a softening agent or plasticizer, and there are disclosed a number of relevant techniques.
The recent trend of more and more rapid processing of photographic materials accelerates the transporting speed of films. Accordingly, physical properties based on prior art have become increasingly insufficient and further improvements are strongly desired. Further, physical properties of films which exhibit less deterioration even when subjected to rapid processing, are also desired.